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Tuesday, March 05, 2013

HONEY MONEY

Swan Lager was once West Australian, so was Browns, Peters
and a plethora of other foods. Now another legendary WA brand is under threat.

The board of Wescobee Honey proposes to sell the lot, lock,
stock, and all barrels to Capilano, Australia’s biggest honey producer.

So what’s the problem, given it will all remain in Australian
hands?

Well, for a start, Capalino is a Queensland based company and
that may not mean much until you start looking at honey facts.

According the Queensland Department of Agriculture, the
Asian honey bee is entrenched in far north Queensland.

This excerpt from the department’s website:

The pest bees are known to nest
in small urban cavities and therefore have the potential to come in contact
with humans. Most importantly, AHB are a natural host for varroa mites, if these
mites were introduced into Australia from a new incursion of honey bees, the
established Asian honey bees would aid the spread of the mite, which would
severely impact Australia's honey bee industry.

And here is a story from ABC Rural, 23.11.2012:

Thousands of
Asian honey bees have been detected and destroyed on a ship at Kurnell in
southern Sydney.

The swarm of
2000 bees was also carrying more than 150 Varroa mites, a pest that has decimated bee populations across
the world.

The chairman of the Australian
Honey Bee Industry Council's quarantine committee, Trevor Weatherhead, says an
incursion of Varroa mite would devastate the industry.

Mr Weatherhead says if they were
to invade here they could have a significant impact on how a beekeeper cares for
his livestock.

"Beekeepers would have to
start treating their hives with acaricides to control this particular Varroa
mite and that's fairly labour intensive and costly."

"The number of beekeepers
would probably drop off initially and therefore you would have less hives in
Australia to do pollination which is valued at between $4 billion and $6
billion."

"And the other major
ramification, particularly seeing this was NSW, countries like Canada would
probably immediately put a ban on live exports of bees from the eastern states
of Australia to Canada."

All right, let’s not panic, the particular varroa
mite found was the jacobsoni, not the destructor, the more potent of the species.

But, here’s the rub, we all know how paranoid
we are about things from The East, that’s why we have a man at the South Australian
border with a gun to shoot starlings and other men in Norsemen to open up your
boot when you drive into this third of the continent. Then there are the
sniffer dogs at Perth airport, able to detect honey, walnuts, apples and even
packets of processed meat.

Fact is, when the varroa comes, it will hit the
East first, so why would you give it an even better chance by agreeing that your
honey processor should be a bloke who is probably more interested in honey
money than food security?

Wescobee began its life as the Beekeepers Trading
Company, a beekeepers cooperative. And now a bunch of directors and shareholders
are quite happy for it to go east along with the rest of the gang and sit back
while our sons and daughters sell their souls and do the only thing left to do –
dig and ship dirt.

This from the Wescobee website:

The Beekeepers of West Australia own and control their own
marketing organisation and it is interesting to note – The W. A. Honey Pool is
quite voluntary; complete freedom is held out to every beekeeper: it is a child
of co-operation.

Compiled by Tom Powell – Manager
of the Honey Pool – 19.06.56

Capilano was started by a couple of Smith brothers who began
selling their honey around Brisbane grocery stores in the early 1950s. One of them
married a Canadian from the Capilano district he met while in Canada as a RAAF
flying instructor during WWII. It is now listed on the Australian Stock
Exchange (CZZ) and at the time of writing the share price was sitting at $2.25.

Capilano’s website boasts it is now one the world’s largest
honey producers.

If this reads like it has an undercurrent of emotion, you’d
be bloody right. And if it triggers a bit in you, go to the Wescobee website
and FB page and vent.

Oh, and if you think Wescobee will take kindly to your
posts, no, they won’t. I posted this and it was removed:

Why would
you sell Wescobee to a company that is rumoured to import honey from China and
Argentina to bolster it's stocks?Have the directors not heard of the varroa mite and the
threat the world's bees are under from declining habitat, insecticides and pesticides.Would selling to an eastern states processor hell
bent on money make sense and give them the right to process whatever in West
Australian facilities?No.